Saturday, December 5, 2009

More snow..

Saturday morning - it wasn't snowing any more, but it had drifted around over night. I had to push the door open to move the snow out of the way. I was able to trudge out to the front of the house and survey the driveway.

Snow drifts block the front door.

The drive way in front of the van was full of snow - the street behind my car was full of snow. There was a lot of shoveling to do. I started shoveling, the whole time thinking about how the first snow fall usually leads to news reports of people dropping dead from a heart attack due to the exertion, so I made sure to take it easy and rest often :-)

Snow drifts in front of the house.

Everyone was suppose to go make meat pies by 9:00am so I attacked the drifts by focusing on the ones that would get the van out first. I was able to dig a path from the front door across the front of the driveway down to where the van was parked. Once the area was kind of clear I looked a little further and found that there was a drift across the mouth of the cul-de-sac. I wanted to dig a path through the drift to get into the circle. Walking down the circle a little I came across other people who were digging snow off of their driveway. Seems that this would be what everyone would be doing this morning. There was a van that was stuck. I helped dig him out and while I was doing this another fellow came and helped. Soon there were three of us digging. We got the van out and another car that had came by later and got stuck. We all dug a path from the circle to the cul-de-sac so the van could get out. I was out for almost two hours digging snow.

Later in the day I started up the truck, and drove it around shopping in all it's four-wheel-drive goodness, I saw all sorts of cars, buses, and even semi's stuck in drifts and on the road. I was feeling invincible until I got stuck myself. I didn't know that I needed to lock the hubs in the front to engage the four-wheel-drive. When I was stuck some kids pointed out that my front wheels weren't spinning when I thought I was in four-wheel-drive mode, once I locked the hubs, it was a LOT better.

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Later that night, me and the kids thought it'd be fun to go out sledding again ( using the word 'sledding' now because I'm finding it difficult to spell 'tobogganing' over and over again, and we didn't have toboggans anyway, we had some Styrofoam boards with a plastic type cover on them. You know - sleds). We went to Prairie Winds park in the truck this time, I was able to PLOW through those snow drifts.

Kids climing Prairie Winds park hill.

Unfortunately, the wind was blowing hard from the north, and standing up on top of the hill, it was brutally cold on our exposed skin, or at least thats what I found. I was trying to get some pics so my gloves were off, and I was holding the camera in one had, and the flash in the other - maybe if I'd been moving around more the blood flow would have been able to keep my extremities warmer than they were. Maybe I should have put my gloves back on.

The snow had drifted near the bottom of the hill. On the top, it was pretty thin with grass still poking through. We were on top of the big hill ( it's really quite intimidating when standing on top looking down.) Clare raced down to the bottom first. Conor was a little more timid, and with the wind blowing the way it was it would have been difficult to see very well. He went over to the shoulder to do his run where it was a little less steep.

Clare on the shoulder of Prairie Winds Hill.

I tried snapping a few shots with my camera, but my fingers quickly stopped working, so I only got a few pics before I`d had enough and put the camera away. I don't think the actual temperature was too bad, I think it was only about -10deg C or so, but the wind chill was making me lose feeling in my finger tips. Later, my face started to freeze up, and I had trouble telling the kids that it was time to go because I couldn't move my mouth to form the words.

Clare sledding down the smaller hill.

Conor going down.

We weren't there long - much to Conor's dismay, he took it pretty hard. Maybe half an hour total.. there wasn't anyone else there either so I didn't feel too bad about leaving, we got a couple of runs in.

Sunday, I went out and cleared off the snow behind my car so I could go to work on Monday. Clare came out an played in the snow banks along the side of the driveway where I was piling the snow.. I took a few of shots of her, and liked the way some of them turned out.